The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 278 No 7443 p303
17 March 2007

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News summary

Oral integrase inhibitor active at 16 weeks

Early data from phase III studies of Merck Sharp & Dohme's raltegravir (formerly known as MK-0518) indicate that the oral integrase inhibitor has greater antiretroviral activity than placebo in treatment-resistant patients infected with HIV.

Raltegravir works by inhibiting the insertion of HIV viral DNA into human DNA.

The trials, known as BENCHMRK-1 and BENCHMRK-2, are ongoing, 156-week, double-blind randomised studies. In both, 16-week data show that more than 75 per cent of patients receiving raltegravir plus optimised background therapy (n=232 and 230, respectively) achieved viral load reductions to less than 400 copies/ml compared with approximately 40 per cent of patients given placebo and optimised background therapy (n=118 and 119, P<0.001 for both studies).

The data were presented at the 14th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections held in Los Angeles last month.